This is all very bad news for Apple.
Icahn is bad news.
His involvement implies the beginning of the end for Apple. Just take a look at what happened with Dell.
I just don't understand Tim Cook at all.
Apple went from the industry leader to a company unable to innovate. It can't even get over its fixation on iPhone's tiny screen size.
And it went from a company that lets its stock price speak for itself, to having to rely on someone such as Icahn to cheerlead its stock. How pathetic is this? Just take a look at what happened to Dell. It is hard to believe that people like Icahn really care about Apple. More likely, they are just in it for the money. They can care less about innovative products and making changes in the quality of life of the customers. Again, it is all about the money. This whole situation with Tim Cook having to resort to talking to Icahn to cheerlead for Apple's stock price is just extremely troubling. It speaks volumes about Tim Cook's inability to lead Apple correctly.
And what is all this talk of paying out dividend? The fact that the payment of dividend is already being done now and that there are more talks of higher dividend payout by Apple is extremely, extremely, worrisome.
Payment of dividend by a company like Apple is an admission by Board and Management that Apple has transited from an innovative, growth driven company to a stagnant company relying on revenue generation rather than growth and innovation. It is an admission that Apple is unable to generate more returns using the cash for the shareholder as compared to giving the cash back to the shareholder and have the shareholder generate the returns himself.
Put it another way, if Apple is still the innovative and growth driven company like it used to be under Jobs, it would surely not payout any dividend -- no shareholders would want it to pay dividend -- because by keeping the cash within Apple and have Apple use the cash to generate returns, the shareholders are able to ensure that there is more returns that way -- since there are no other ways to generate a higher return than Apple.
By shifting to a dividend paying company, Apple is in fact admitting that it no longer has the ability to innovate and grow like it did before, and is thus not able to use the cash to generate a higher return as compared to giving the cash back to the shareholders and have the shareholders themselves generate a return by some other means.
Again, this is all very bad news.
The sooner Tim Cook is gone, the better.
He is the worst thing to have happened to Apple. We are in danger of a redux of the disaster that happened at Apple after Jobs was first ousted.
If nothing is done to reverse this, I think Apple would become like Microsoft or Dell and become irrelevant in a couple of years time like BlackBerry.